


My fingers laced to crown

by AnnieTheMouse



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Vampires, Whumptober, all of these tags are chapter specific as each chapter is a separate story, except for the angst, that's the common theme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26682859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieTheMouse/pseuds/AnnieTheMouse
Summary: I was a heavy heart to carry / My beloved was weighed down / My arms around their neck / My fingers laced to crown.Short stories from different paths of sadness and sorrow. Each chapter is a separate short story, no connection between them other than angst I'm afraid.Ch1: Booker. Drowning.Ch2: Joe. Nightmares. (Joe/Nicky)Ch3: Booker. Glamour. (Booker/F)Ch4: Andy. Soulmates. (Andy/Quyhn)Ch5: Booker. An Offer. (Booker/Copley)Ch6: Quyhn. DeathCh7: Andy. Life
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Booker | Sebastien le Livre's Wife, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/James Copley, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Original Female Character(s), Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 24
Kudos: 67





	1. My love's an iron ball (Booker)

It’s the third night when he wakes up, body shaking, that he starts to realize what is happening.

The first time it had seemed familiar, so many nights of waking from his nightmares, that he put it aside. Put it in a bottle, til he could drink enough to force himself to sleep again.

But this time, he realizes. He realizes it, and damns it at the same time.

It’s the lack of nightmare that is waking him. He has spent the past 200 years dying and drowning, but he’s also spent the past 200 years connected to another living soul. There was always someone in the back of his mind, always a presence there.

Now there is nothing. Nothing in his mind, and nothing in his life to help balance that out, in this exile.

He’d always blamed the dreams for breaking him, but they are nothing compared to how he feels now. He’d always felt alone, but he now realizes he never was. How ironic it is that he now misses those dreams of dying that made him finally lash out. That he misses dying every night. He misses dreaming of it. He misses her, even if he never actually knew her.

He tries everything, more drink til he dies, drugs, anything but he cannot rest. He cannot stay asleep. He feels the sleep deprivation eating into him, even worse than before, and he has always understood why this was a form of torture that was quite effective, but it’s self-torture in a way now.

He cannot live with his heart broken in half, especially given it was him who broke it. Broke them. Booker knows he broke everything in the memory of family, and in doing so he broke his now family in memory of another. He cannot lay his blame at their feet. It was him that dragged them down.

It’s barely a year later he throws himself into the ocean, weights around his ankles.

To hopefully sleep once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I wrote 'That could be enough', I mentioned in one chapter that there was a story there that was too sad for me to write.
> 
> I lied. I can't do angst in long form. Angst in long form does not do me well. But short form to get the demons out? That I must do.
> 
> First chapter is that story. Other chapters are other shortform angst demons from my brain.
> 
> Titles all from Heavy in your Arms by Florence and the Machine.


	2. Protecting both your heart and mine (Joe/Nicky)

Joe wakes, almost with a shudder before he stops himself. He is wrapped around Nicky, of course, and it wouldn’t do to wake him. It’s difficult enough to extricate himself without waking Nicky, without his body giving away his tension, his uneasiness. And he doesn’t want to disturb Nicky, not when he is fast asleep, not when this is one thing that he can protect him from. If not his body, then at least his heart.

The dream is the same as it’s been the last couple weeks. Nicky as Keane puts the gun in his mouth, Nicky as he screams on the table beside him from the doctor’s latest test and then goes still, Nicky, always Nicky.

Really, the dream is the same as it’s always been, all these years. It's been the same for centuries by now. The location, the cause changes, but the nightmare remains. Nicky dead, at his feet, to never return. To never be his again.

“What would you know, of the weight of all these years alone?” Booker’s voice calls out to him from his memory, so much anger, so much sorrow.

“What would you know of the weight of all these years of fear?” he mutters to himself, wishing his brother was here to hear it as much as he’s glad that right now, he’s not. For they have love, love that he knows now was his brother’s greatest envy - but the flip side of all of that is loss.

Booker knew that loss after a normal lifetime. Joe dreams, sometimes, of that loss after a millennia. And what it would do to him. Now even more a thought, more of a horror, when he knows that losing just that one lifetime drove his brother mad. What would it do to him? Or to Nicky?

His imagination runs away with him, and he knows there will be no more sleep tonight. His nightmares are of his own making, not Quyhn’s.

He’s not sure if that makes them better or worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although my biggest story so far is a Booker redemption arc, as I said there I can also see the damage he did - and Joe & Nicky, I think would feel that damage, for far longer than they'd like.


	3. Whispering like it’s a secret (Booker/F)

He rocks into her body, gently so gently kisses her hair, her cheek. “Jeanne, mon amour” he whispers, more words of endearment, of devotion falling from him as he makes love to her, his wife’s lips at his throat so sweet, so familiar.

When she comes around him it’s a heaven he can’t resist, following her over the edge, and still his words spill from him, whispers against her skin in the dark. “Jeanne, tu es mon ange” he tells her, tears nearly in his eyes as he cradles his body around her small form, puts himself between her and the cruelty of the world. 

Sleep is a blissful sweet thing here with his one true love beside him, and he is drained enough that his eyes droop, watching her still even as he finally succumbs.

When Booker wakes he is still tired, but awareness cannot escape him no matter if he wishes it. He looks at the woman on the other side of the bed, and she stares back, waiting. Wary.

His hand reaches out to cup the unfamiliar cheek, fingers trembling. “Please, again” he whispers, he begs, and there is sorrow and understanding both in her eyes as her mouth turns to kiss his wrist. As her fangs sink deep to taste his blood.

A moment of pain before the euphoria hits, and then its Jeanne, his heart, kissing at his wrist, eyes warm as he draws her in.

Her lips taste of salt and copper, but it’s easy enough to ignore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure if I should tag this as 'AU - Vampires' or just 'Vampires' because who knows? Maybe vampires (and their glamour) can exist where immortals exist too.
> 
> This story brought to you about the idea of how sometimes you will do anything to deceive yourself, and one immortal who wants to forget meeting one immortal who needs to survive and both recognizing the potential (and sorrow) in each other seemed sadly beautiful.


	4. And they took me to the river (Andy)

The thing with soulmarks is they remain a constant, until your partner is no longer on this earth. Hers still remains on her arm, in her view, every day. It should be reassuring, but it’s not. 

Andy knows how most people react to their soul marks - the moment they disappear, they fade, being the most traumatic moment of their life. But every moment she sees hers, still visible, it’s another moment that she knows her love is in torment. That her love has not yet died, has not yet been freed from her prison by death. That the immortality that holds them all still here on this earth is the cruelest thing of all.

When they’d first met on the banks of a long lost river, she’d thought the color of her mark was to commemorate that meeting. Now Andy sometimes wonders if the fact it’s the color of water is a warning that she just hadn’t understood until it was far too late. 

She’s tried to cut it out, burn it out, more than once. When they’re apart, when the others cannot see her. 

It always comes back. 

She takes to hiding it, under sleeves, under bracelets, under wraps, taking any tactic she can to avoid seeing it there, mocking her for her failure, for the fact that she can survive anything, fight anything, but she cannot save her soulmate, cannot find her soulmate where she’s buried deep underwater.

Where she lets her drown, over and over.

Booker once tries to tell her the dreams have stopped, but when she unwraps her wrist wrap that she has left there for months, the soul mark is still visible. She stares him down, knowing why he tried, an attempt of kindness for them both, but also knowing he will never try that lie again. He gets quieter in his discomfort, but he never tries to hide it completely. Not after that day.

In one way it’s nice to know someone shares her pain. Quyhn’s pain. Both their pain.

Not that it’s fair to any of them, but at least it’s something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I glomping onto the fact that Whumptover is a thing and apparently I have greatly coincidental timing?
> 
> Of course.


	5. Never felt like any blessing (Booker/Copley)

He spots it coming, but chooses to ignore it. If he doesn’t acknowledge, if he doesn’t give away, maybe they will not have to have this conversation.

But eventually Copley gives up on subtlety. The look on his face. The hand resting on his cheek. There is no escaping the offer there, the possibility.

“Non” Booker croaks out, stepping back.

“You’re not interested?” Copley asks, an eyebrow cocked, and apparently Booker hadn’t been as good at ignoring as he thought he was.

“Doesn’t matter. I cannot.”

“Why?”

Booker’s face cannot stay impassive at that. The flinch, the pain, it’s too etched into his bones to hide. It serves as a response when words won’t come.

“And it’ll be less painful, somehow, when I die now?” Copley asks, hand now clenched at his side. “You won’t feel it now?”

“I will” Booker acknowledges. “But I can live with the road not taken. I cannot live with having that taken from me. Not again.”

He turns and walks away. “Call me when you have a new mission for me.”

***

The news, as reported by Andy, is impossible.

Absolutely impossible - except here Copley stands hale and hearty when the last time Booker saw him was under a hail of bullets and blood.

Copley reaches out, and he flinches. Copley’s face is hurt. It hurts.

“What’s your excuse now?”

The easy thing to do would be to fall into his arms. It’s how the story is supposed to go, he is sure.

But Sebastien has never been good at easy.

And ‘I love you’ has never felt like a blessing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, maybe more Booker/Copleyish, but I couldn't figure out a way to put that in without giving it away.
> 
> This is the story that got the titles for these stories in the first place, because I shamelessly stole a line from the song for the story. It just took a little longer to finish.
> 
> When trying to figure out next steps for 'That could be enough' I read a lot of redemption stories. And some of them were Booker/Copley. Now, don't get me wrong, I love all the pairings this fandom has is seen so far, I will read them all (well except anything that has Joe & Nicky not together in some form) and Booker/Copley has been done in lovely ways, but it got me thinking - does someone becoming immortal just miraculously solve the problems?
> 
> In some worlds ... probably not.


	6. Where they slowly let me drown (Quyhn)

When she is in the water she is nothing but death.

When the useless man who has pulled her and her iron coffin from the water is babbling nonsense at her, she looks at him, and figures - **why stop now?**

When she finds the pathetic man whose dreams pulled her from the water for centuries, his eyes wide and bloodshot ...  
When she finds the mortal man whose eyes had tried to watch her, track her from where she’d taken him from ...  
When she finds the man whose yacht looks particularly useful for her needs ...  
When one of her paid men displeases her ...

Well. Mortals are disposable. Her immortal captive is … reusable. 

She smiles, razor sharp, at the girl in her dreams as she watches them die. Watches them all die, nothing but death. 

She drowns the child with blood, like she once drowned her with water.

For there is no need to stop. 

So she won’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was slightly experimental. Not sure if it worked, but was fun to try.


	7. All this killing time (Andy)

It takes her a little time to figure it out. The healing is not gone, not truly. It’s just slow, sluggish, simple healing taking minutes instead of seconds.

The others rejoice when they also realize. They think it’s over. Booker especially sees it as a revelation, but Nile’s hope is breathtaking to see, and she can feel the relief that emanates from Nicky and Joe when they see the cut on her hand slowly reseal itself.

She wonders if Lykon had been the same, if he could have survived and lived years if his wounds hadn’t been so critical, if they’d been able somehow to help him hang on. Is what is happening to her new, or just that this time medical care was strong enough to keep her living? Or conversely - could she even be aging, just slower? Is she caught in some sort of halfway point? Her own limbo. Her own purgatory. 

There’s a lot of questions, and no one to ask the questions of. Especially once she’s seen her family’s relief at her closing wounds.

But she wonders privately if she’d truly come back now, if she took a wound as bad as Lykon’s herself. She knows the others all believe it, she tries to believe it, but in her head - she really doesn’t know. Still, when Quyhn puts the gun to her head, she doesn’t flinch.

Guess she’ll find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story brought to you by 'how is Andy actually still kicking ass after getting shot badly?'
> 
> yes yes, I know, action movie hand waving, but my brain took it in a 'what if that's actually a sign' direction.
> 
> Considering this series 'closed' - I might come up with more ideas later, but for now this is all the weird negative stuff I had in my brain for now.


End file.
